Podsedkowska, Heleen

Abstract [en]

This research project is designed to enhance the planning process that can aid authorities moving towards sustainable and economically feasible local and regional mobility systems. The improvements that have been made to transit so far have not been successful in breaking the trend of increasing car traffic and decreasing transit trip making. This means that sustainable mobility is a complex system which also encompasses changing attitudes and behaviours, integrating spatial and energy planning into it, and looking upstream to affect the causes of the problem instead of downstream to just fix its consequences. Environmental impacts (noise, pollution, health problems), accidents and congestion are all by-products of transport activities – they are the so-called external costs – and must be made part of the equation. European guidelines were analysed, as well as the results of many of the European Union‘s mobility research programs. The core of the research analyses how to move Karlskrona municipality‘s mobility system towards its vision of success in the future through the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development – Sustainable Mobility (FSSD-SM). Backcasting from a sustainable vision in the long-term future is central to this process. The Municipality of Karlskrona, in Sweden, is the case study. A sustainability analysis of Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) systems was undertaken to determine the feasability of integrating this modal system into the mobility solution for Karlskrona municipality.